The purpose of this proposal is to evaluate STEEP, a preventive/intervention program for high risk mothers. The major goal is to foster a healthy emotional relationship between mother and infant, thus promoting healthy social-emotional development in the child. The program begins at approximately the fifth month of pregnancy and involves both home visits and group sessions throughout the first year of the infant's life. STEEP is designed to help the mother better understand her infant and her relationship with her infant; to be more sensitive to infant cues and signals; to better interpret infant behavior, particularly within a developmental framework; to improve perspective taking skills. Because a mother's own unmet needs often render her less able to meet her child's needs, the intervention also focuses on the mother, attempting to help her develop ways of coping with the demands of her life and ensuring that her needs are met. The flexible design of the STEEP program enables the interventers to address each mother's unique life situation and build on her special skills and strengths. Primaparous women who are patients at the Hennepin County Medical Center, who are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, are 18 years and older, and who are judged to be at risk for later caretaking problems, would be randomly assigned either to the preventative/intervention program (n=64) or the control group (n=64). To evaluate the program, comprehensive measures would be used. The quality of the attachment of mother-child pairs would be assessed upon completion of the program and one year later the quality of the relationship and the child's social-emotional competence would be assessed in a tool-use problem-solving situation. In addition, both groups would be pretested, post, and delayed posttested, using other measures of the child's developmental status, as well as measures of the mother's interest, feelings, and understanding of infants.